Landesgartenschau and its innovative wooden structure

This double-domed pavilion is the first building to have a structure entirely made out of wodden panels created by robots. This building is the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall located in Germany and is made from 243 plates of plywood created using robotic. Each one of this plates have a unique size and shape designed to fit well together and to transmit the forces as digitally calculated and designed. The plates thickness is around 50 milimeters and when they work together they create a shell that needs no additional support.

Designers are academics from University of Stuttgart‘s Institute for Computational Design (ICD), Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITDK) and Institute of Engineering Geodesy. “Is the first building to have its primary structure entirely made of robotically prefabricated beech plywood plate” according to the project team. The panles together with the insulation, waterproofing and cladding for the building were also digitally prefabricated, meaning the structure could be assembled in four weeks.

This pavilion is divided by two spaces, an entrance area and an exhibition area with a large glass opening at the end, allowing the light to go inside and framing views. Each has its own domed ceiling made by the same method and the two are connected by a narrower passage made of concave plates. This Landesgartenschau pavilion occupies 125 squared meters and a height of 17 metres at its tallest point, requiring just 12 cubic meters of beech to the entire structure.

This building offers a new architectural possibility to explore. By using the new technologies we can ignore this kind of kind of traditional structure and open our horizons, dreaming up new ways to transmit the forces, and it means, new ways to design, “compared to classical approaches in architecture we like to call this an “informed design process”, simply because as architects we develop our own design environment to make sure that the generated design is not only producible, but also structurally and architecturally performative” explained ICD researcher and team member Oliver David Krieg.

Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall – Photographs by ICD/ITKE/IIGS University Stuttgart and by Roland Halbe